


Half Baked

by lisachan



Series: Chronicles of the Academy [13]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Gender Dysphoria, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 18:35:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13840599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisachan/pseuds/lisachan
Summary: It's Celes' first year at Titania's Magic Academy, and he's doing everything in his power to keep up with classes and training as he battles against his own demons. Sometimes, though, it's too tiring, and he just doesn't feel like he can manage. Luckily, Langley doesn't share his opinion.





	Half Baked

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this week's COW-T #8, Mission #3, prompt was gender dysphoria and I tried to do my best.

Since he was a child Celes always felt there was something that wasn’t right with him. Something that wasn’t quite as simple as everything seemed to be with the other children.

Naturally, back then he couldn’t have pointed out what it was exactly. He had a feeling he wasn’t just like any other child, but after all he was Manila’s baby, the Seer’s heir, he thought it was normal to feel different, set apart from anyone else. He thought it could be a consequence of his power, of his mother’s power, or simply of the constant traveling. Who could’ve known – he might’ve gotten ill with something during one of his inter-dimensional trips with mom, some ancient, forgotten plague that had no other symptom than making kids feel weird.

It wasn’t until he turned ten that he started to understand that there was a problem with him, something that just didn’t click right inside of him. And it was, of course, because of the clothes. 

People tend to dismiss the importance of clothes. After all, they always end up thinking, it’s just fabric. Things you put on yourself to cover your body. Nothing bigger than that.

That’s certainly true – when you feel comfortable in the things you’re wearing. It’s not anymore, though, when you start hating every second of your life just because the protocol insists you have to wear a skirt, or a gown, or pretty lace-covered shirts leaving your shoulders bare and tightening around your waist because a cute girl’s supposed to have a thin waistline and wider hips.

His mom used to take him away on the longest trips all over the lands every time she possibly could, but it the end they always came back to the Summer Palace, eventually. They always came back to royalty, to its specific, suffocating set of rules and to the major enforcer of those rules, his uncle Lacros.

Uncle Lacros is the Crown’s High Priest, and his role establishes him as the person overseeing all aspects of life at the Palace and making sure that the Book of the Law is followed precisely, especially from the royal family. His mother loves him with all her heart, that’s one thing Celes is sure he got about the multi-faceted prism of colors and craziness his mother is, but she hates him when he’s overly strict about rules – which means she ends up hating him every time he presents himself to her as the High Priest and not simply her brother – because his mother simply cannot stand the rules. Any rule, actually. She lives to defy them. It is completely shocking that she managed to be such a successful Seer, really.

Celes is a different person. He likes rules. He feels devoted to the Law. To his future role, if ever he will become worthy of it. But those simple rules about clothing, about the role he was supposed to undertake during ceremonials and public appearances, just because he was born a female… those laws he never liked. He never followed them, not even once.

Perhaps that’s the only trait of him that really tells he’s his mother’s son, really.

Things were bad in the beginning – no one seemed to be able to understand his issues. When he told uncle Lacros that he did not like what the rules in the Book of the Law had to say about him, he freaked out, of course. “You,” he said sternly, “Are destined to become Tanit’s Seer. You cannot put that in danger for a whim. The seat you were born to occupy is the very seat upon which lie the destiny of all the lands. It is more important than how you feel.”

His mother had seen someone change their gender already: aunt Abiline had another name when she was born, different traits, another physical appearance, but she had transitioned from male to female. For his mother, a true believer in the capital importance of women in the universe if there ever was one, it was easier to understand how a boy could’ve wanted to turn into a girl, than the other way ‘round. So when Celes told her about it, she kept asking why, because she couldn’t see a reason behind it, and the simple “because I _am a boy_ ” Celes used to explain himself was too weak an argument, in her opinion, it sounded like a phase, something passing, and Celes knows for years she believed he would’ve eventually changed his mind, and she could’ve started calling her Celestia again.

He couldn’t be older than 12 years old when he finally went to aunt Abiline and, with the clear eyes and stubborn innocence of all kids that age, he asked her how she had done it. He just wanted to know – it didn’t matter to him if it would’ve been a hard or long process, even if she had told him that it had been the easiest and quickest procedure she ever went through it wouldn’t have changed a thing for him: back then he didn’t wanna _do_ it, he just wanted to know it was possible. To find solace in the idea that someday, sooner or later, he could’ve chosen to do it, and it would’ve worked.

Aunt Abiline told him exactly what he wanted to hear: that there was magic that could help him, and that his very destiny, the one he resented so much, was going to bring him exactly where he would need to be to get it, eventually. To Titania’s Magical Academy, where all Seers in training must go to get in contact with their clairvoyance and learn how to use it properly. There, he would’ve found all that he needed to make his wish come true.

And when he had told her he didn’t yet know if it was his true wish or not, she had smiled sweetly as she so often used to do and she had brushed his hair – he wore them long, back in the day, and pure blonde as they had been when he was born. And she had told him “what you are doesn’t depend on the Law. It doesn’t depend on the people around you and what they expect of you, and it doesn’t even depend on what you like or what’s more convenient for you. What you are is what you are, and it’s not that you don’t know your wish, yet, is that you’re not yet ready to admit it”.

Years later, he can’t deny she was right about it.

“So pensive,” Langley smiles and hits his shoulder with his own gently, and only because of that Celes finally becomes aware of his presence next to himself. He looks up at him smiling smugly and, as always, he battles for a second with how much he envies his self-confidence. Langley knows himself, he knows what he can ask of himself, he knows how he looks like and the power those looks give him, and he’s not afraid to use it, and that’s something Celes never could say for himself. He’s always been awkward. Uncomfortable in his own skin. Even now that he’s finally transitioning, though very slowly, thanks to professor Mettier and his teachings, his half baked body makes him feel so weird that every now and then he finds himself cringing at the most irrelevant things in the most absurd of times, like when he passes in front of any reflecting surfaces, not even a mirror, simply a window or the curve of a metal glass, and his subconscious registers his own reflection, even though he himself is not aware of it.

“Hey,” he says, finally looking down. He doesn’t want to get angry at Langley – especially because Langley has nothing to do with his struggle. If anything, he reassures him, with the constant hitting on him that every now and then seems so sincere even him ends up believing he could be a desirable person, despite the faults in his body. 

“Mmh,” Langley smiles, remaining so close to him Celes can feel the warmth of his skin through his clothes, “What’s on your mind? Must be something bad, you haven’t said a word all day.”

“How do you know that?” Celes raises an eyebrow, looking back at him, “We weren’t even together today.”

Langley smiles again, a softer smile, a more private one. One of those that always manage to make Celes blush. “I figured you wanted to be left alone. So I just followed you.”

It happens this time too. He blushes and feels compelled to use irony to fight embarrassment, so he turns away, scratching the tip of his nose. “Like a stalker?”

Langley smiles again and wraps his arms around his shoulders from behind, pulling him in for a hug. “I guess you could say so,” he whispers against the skin of Celes’ neck.

Celes swallows, feeling the beat of Langley’s heart against his own back. It’s thumping right behind his left shoulder blade. For a second it feels like having two hearts instead of one. Beating at the same time.

“What… what are you doing?”

“Mmmh. Reconnecting,” Langley says, placing a few soft kisses up along Celes’ neck.

“We’re in the middle of the hallway...” Celes tries to free himself from Langley’s hold, but his moves are unconvinced and lack in determination, “People could see.”

“People have seen me having sex a thousand times, my dear,” Langley answers nonchalantly, pressing a little harder against him, “And I’ll tell you more, more than half of these people have seen me having sex because I was having sex with them. So, you see, nothing they haven’t already seen before.”

“Okay, but that wasn’t public!” Celes tries, gasping when he feels Langley’s half-hard erection against his buttocks.

“I’ll have to correct you on that point too, apparently,” Langley smirks.

Celes whines and pushes away with a little more strength. Just that tiny bit he needed to let Langley know this time he wanted to be freed for real. And Langley complies, releasing him from his hug but keeping his hands on his shoulders not to make him run away – a precaution he doesn’t really need, because Celes doesn’t want to run, right now. He just wanted to feel less pressure.

He turns around, facing Langley again. He tilts his head and huffs, and then pouts, as he pushes his hair away from his forehead and behind his own ear. “Too pushy,” he says. He knows he has to school Langley on this, or they’ll end up fighting, at some point, and he doesn’t want that. “Not here. It feels weird.”

“Got it,” Langley raises both hands in surrender, “Then come with me to the dorm. Pretty please?”

Celes sighs, rolling his eyes, hands on his hips. “We still got classes…” he tries.

Langley smiles, and there’s a world in that smile. And in his eyes, shining so brightly they’re almost blinding. He gets closer, slips his arms under Celes’ and hugs him around his waist, bowing to leave a half-wet kiss on the curve of his neck. “If I don’t have you now I’m gonna die,” he whispers, the tip of his nose running up and down along his throat, still too flat for his own taste. “I’ve been thinking about you non-stop since I woke up. I’m obsessed. Last time you felt so good, cherry pie. Shannen’s starting to hate me, your butt has become my only conversation topic.”

Celes shivers, and then laughs, despite himself. Last time felt good, that’s true. But last time he was half drunk and his barriers were down, and he didn’t feel aware of his own body as he feels today. Some days are better than others, in that sense, and this is not one of them. “Shannen…” he sighs, trying to tone the conversation down, “Shannen hates you all the time.”

“Even more now,” Langley insists, as his lips grow hungrier, “Baby, please, come on. Come on, love.” He keeps covering him in kisses and Celes feels weak all over, his knees coming together, his skin burning. “I’ll make it worth it, I promise.”

That is one promise Langley never had any troubles keeping. And following one last shiver filled with anticipation and an idea of pleasure so vibrant it almost makes his hands shake, Celes nods and follows him.

*

“The lights,” Celes murmurs against Langley’s lips as Langley pushes him inside the room, “Keep them off.”

“Mmh,” Langley refuses to let his lips go, but he’s already searching blindly for the switch, “But I want to see you.”

“No,” Celes quickly grabs his hand and brings it back on his own crotch. It feels damn uncomfortable, but it’s better than the lights anyway, “Not today. Please.”

Busy palming him, Langley forgets all about the lights and kisses him more deeply. “You’re not hard yet,” he says in a whisper.

“I won’t get hard tonight,” Celes says, a pinch of disappointment tinging his voice sadder.

Langley backs off an inch, searching for his eyes. “You did, last time.”

“Yeah… not tonight, believe me.” Celes looks away, his cheeks turning pinker once again. 

Langley actually stops moving, one of his hands still on Celes’ hip, the other on his crotch. “My love,” he says, but he’s struggling, it’s clear in his voice, “If you want, I will stop. Right now.”

Celes looks at him. His eyes are alight, his skin so warm Celes can feel its temperature even at a distance. His lips are swollen by bites and kisses and the undone collar of his shirt, showing the few marks Celes bit into his skin on their way here, is so messed up it makes Celes want to strip the whole thing off him.

No, he doesn’t want him to stop. He just wishes sex wouldn’t be such a complicated matter, on days like this. Days in which he can’t even think about his own body without wanting to throw up for how alien he feels it compared to his own soul. Days in which he can’t even take into consideration the possibility that someone else might want him, because he finds himself disgusting.

He hates to feel like this. He knows who he is – _what_ he is, and he _hates_ that his body just doesn’t follow. He’s doing all he can, attending professor Mettier’s lessons as if his life depended on that, he’s practicing the spells, making sure the potions are all balanced, that the chemical equations respond to the alchemical laws he’s learning in class, but he’s going too slow. He’s just too fucking slow. His breasts are taking forever to shrink and every millimeter of girth he loses requires him a stronger spell than the one before. His penis grows so slow sometimes he can’t see any differences for weeks. It is monstrous, right now, a ridiculous oversize bean coming out the folds in his flesh, folds he hates, hiding an opening he doesn’t want, and he can’t even touch it because, like raw flesh, every time he even just passes his fingertips on it to help the spells settle he feels such an intense burning he wants to cry. His features are still too sweet. He’s not tall enough. His body’s too slim, there’s no strength to it, no strength at all, and every time he looks at himself in the mirror he feels even more of a monster than he did when he was still a girl, because at least back then he was a misplaced boy, now he’s a misplaced boy in a disgusting undone body, and what scares him the most, the very thing that terrifies him, that makes him shake in his clothes, that keeps him from sleeping at night, is that he might-- he might never become what he wants to become. The spells could fail. His body could reject them. Professor Mettier told him. Anyone else would do this easily, him? He’s a fucking Seer. Seers are fucking female. Programmed to be that. To step on blood-covered lands with tiny white girl feet, to smile at potential lovers all over the multiverse with peach pink full lips, to flip their beautiful long hair in the whirlwind of time and space and to bear fucking children to succeed to them once they’re dead. He could struggle with this magic for years and just when he thinks he got there, his body could just reprogram itself and simply turn back.

And the mere thought of it makes him want to die.

He can’t go back to what he was. He’s too far gone for that. And at the same time he hates the in-between being he is now. 

And the only times he can stop himself from falling down this thorny rabbit hole is when he’s with Langley – because Langley finds him beautiful, he says it all the time. Even now, despite what he told him, he’s whispering adoring nonsense in his ears and Celes feels so full of love and gratitude his heart could break.

“Baby,” he says sweetly, making him lie down on the bed on his stomach to hide his breast and penis, that he doesn’t even dare touching not to remind Celes they are there, “You’re so beautiful. By the Gods, I’ve never seen anything more perfect. Let me feel you, come here. Let me feel your ass,” he says, squeezing his buttocks, pushing them together and then parting them to expose his opening, “Shit, you feel so good. I can’t wait to be inside you. Just leave it to me, my dearest. Leave everything to me.”

And Celes does it. Hiding everything he doesn’t like about himself, he offers Langley everything he possibly can without feeling mortally ashamed, and trusts that Langley will make it worth it – that he will make it good.

He still has a hole between his legs, right underneath the testicles painfully slowly growing out of him, but Langley avoids it completely, as if it didn’t even exist. He goes straight for the opening between his buttocks, making it wet and slick with saliva, playing with it with the tip of his thumb, first, then with his index and middle fingers, circling it slowly and then pushing past it, penetrating him in one hard push to open the way for himself. 

Celes throws his head back, moaning wetly as he feels Langley’s fingers curl inside of him. He loves this kind of pleasure because it doesn’t involve any part of himself he hates. Nothing of what feels so good now he wishes to change, and for a second he can pretend his body is alright, that it is really as perfect as Langley says it is. 

A few more minutes and Langley’s inside him, hands on his hips, thrusting in his body hard as if he wanted to find the end of him, get to the bottom of him, to the very core of his soul. And it feels amazing. All-consuming and confusing in all the best ways. And when he comes, calling Langley’s name and falling limp on the mattress the second after, even though his cock didn’t get hard, even though the pleasure felt awkward to an organ not yet developed enough to receive it, even though he didn’t shoot any load and even though the tension in the half-formed shaft grew so intense at some point it feel painful enough to shed a few tears, he feels satisfied. He feels okay. Because Langley’s still there, behind him. Whispering that he’s perfect right against his ear.

He turns around with the last of his strength, pressing himself against Langley’s body and then covering them both with the blanket. He clings to him for dear life, hoping to absorb some of his confidence, some of the practical ease with which Langley lives his everyday life. He hopes spending time with this amazing person can help him gain the trust in himself that he lacks, because he suspects that magic can maybe fix his body, but it will never be able to fix his soul. That, he has to do by himself.

Shannen finds them like this a few minutes later. He opens the door, turns on the lights and looks at them with his usual icy glare, barely even blinking. “Ah,” he says, “There you are.”

“My love,” Langley smiles, sitting up to cover Celes’ body even more, “Your beauty, as always, astonishes me and confounds me. I am blinded by your light. Your eyes are haunting blue gems I--”

“Shut up, I don’t wanna hear your annoying voice,” Shannen cuts him short, “Lady Violet sent me to find you. You missed her class and she’s furious.”

“I am moved that you care about my education so much that you--”

“I don’t give a shit about your education, or anyone else’s including mine, for that matter, I only came because she was busting my balls and because I want to see Celes.” He walks straight towards the bed and tries to push Langley away. “Leave. It’s my turn now.”

“My love,” Langley says as he promptly moves away, making sure Celes remains hidden underneath the blanket all the time despite their messy movements, “We just had sex. I doubt Celes is ready for another round, right now.”

“Then we’re all lucky I have the sex drive of a piece of mud,” Shannen answers, shrugging his shirt off and simply slipping under the covers next to Celes. “I’m sleepy. It’s cold outside. He’s warm. That’s all I need,” he concludes, “Goodnight,” and he clings to Celes’ body, as simple as that, closing his eyes and getting to sleep.

Celes looks at Langley, eyes wide and rounded like two mismatched amber-and-gray moons, and Langley looks back at him and simply laughs, shaking his head. “You know how he is,” he says, buttoning up his shirt, “When he’s set onto something there’s no moving him away. Do you mind sacrificing yourself for an hour or two as I try and fix the situation with my House Lady?”

Celes looks at Shannen, sleeping peacefully next to him. He thinks there are worse sacrifices that can be done, and he nods towards Langley, coming up with the smallest smile.

“I think I can manage,” he says.

“My Precious,” Langley chuckles, disorderly throwing his tie around his neck and leaving it hanging open as he leaves the room, “If there’s one thing I know for sure by now is that there’s literally nothing in the whole multiverse that you cannot manage.”

As the lights are turned off once again and the door closes, snuggling closer to Shannen Celes allows himself to truly believe that.


End file.
